Robbery of Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian was in Paris for Fashion Week in October 2016, staying at the Hôtel de Pourtalès, a private residence on rue Tronchet in the 8th arrondissement. In the early hours of 3 October 2016, a group of armed men, some posing as police officers, entered the building. They handcuffed the night concierge and forced him to show them to her suite. Kardashian was held at gunpoint, bound, gagged with tape and locked in a bathroom while the men took jewellery valued at more than €9 million, including a ring worth about €4 million. Her spokesperson said she was badly shaken but not physically hurt. Her bodyguard was not in the building at the time.

The only item recovered was a diamond cross necklace dropped in the street as the robbers fled. DNA evidence led investigators to suspects, who were arrested in January 2017, and twelve people were eventually charged.

Ten defendants went on trial before the Paris assize court on 28 April 2025. One person charged in the case had died in March 2025, and another was to be tried separately for health reasons. Kardashian testified on 13 May 2025, telling the court she had believed she would die that night. She accepted an apology from the principal defendant, Aomar Aït Khedache, telling him, "I forgive you," while saying it did not change the trauma.

On 23 May 2025 the court convicted four men of the armed robbery and confinement of Kardashian. Aït Khedache, 69, was sentenced to eight years in prison, five of them suspended; the court ordered the custodial portion merged with a sentence he was already serving, so he did not return to prison. Didier Dubreucq, Yunice Abbas and Marc-Alexandre Boyer were each sentenced to seven years, five of them suspended, with the remaining time already covered by pretrial detention. Aït Khedache's son and former partner received lesser sentences, and two further defendants were convicted of related offences, one of them only of a weapons charge that led to a fine. The court found no evidence that an informant had passed on Kardashian's movements and acquitted the two defendants accused of doing so.

The presiding judge, David De Pas, acknowledged that the sentences were lenient compared with the 10 years the prosecution had sought for the main defendants. He said the court had weighed the nine years since the robbery and the defendants' ages and health, which he said made it ethically impossible to imprison anyone. None of those convicted returned to prison.

Neither the prosecution nor any of the eight convicted defendants appealed before the deadline expired on 2 June 2025, and the verdicts, including the two acquittals, became final. Kardashian said through her lawyers that she was satisfied with the verdict and wanted to turn the page, describing the robbery as the most terrifying experience of her life.